I’ve been a big fan of The Displaced Nation for quite some time now. How could I not, with a tagline of ‘A Land of Plenty for the Global Voyager,’ promising advice, opinions and yarns? One of my favorite features on the site is the interview series called Random Nomads. The questions posed aren’t your average ’where [...]
Archive for the ‘Adventures Big & Small’ Category
Career Break? Yes Please!
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Change, Expat Life, Life Balance, Light Bulb Moments, Travel, tagged blogging, burnout, career break, Career Break Secrets, Career Break Secrets Travel Show, career change, global nomad, Jeff Jung, laid off, Random Nomads, serial wanderer, The Displaced Nation, travel, travel writing, unemployed on May 17, 2012 | 6 Comments »
Happy Queen’s Day
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Culture & Customs, Dutch Life, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Food and Drink, Holidays, Netherlands, tagged bands, carnival, celebration, drink, Dutch, Dutch national holiday, food, music festival, Netherlands, orange, picnics, Queen's Day, Queen's Night, street parties, The Hague, yard sales on May 3, 2012 | 10 Comments »
Never let it be said that Dutchies don’t know how to party. Seriously. Never say it. I’ve written about Queen’s Day before, and having celebrated the Dutch national holiday for the third year running, I can only say that it continues to amaze me. There’s something about it that makes me happy, and I’m not even [...]
Welcoming Party
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Culture & Customs, Dutch Life, Family & Friends, Netherlands, Travel, tagged airport, arrival lounge, arrivals, balloons, clown nose, departures, flags, flowers, helium balloon, kazoos, music festival, noisemakers, parking lots, passengers, Schiphol, travelers, welcome home, welcome signs on May 1, 2012 | 24 Comments »
Every now and then I’m reminded of a cultural aspect of the Netherlands that is so very different from the US that it practically screams ‘this is SO different!’ This morning it was my journey to Schiphol airport to pick up Husband from his latest trip. Now first let me say that I love Schiphol [...]
A Delicate Balancing Act
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Albert Heijn, Change, Expat Life, Expat Transitions & Change, Family & Friends, First Year Blur, Light Bulb Moments, New to Nederland, The Animals, tagged Albert Heijn, balancing act, bravery, cat, change, Charley, courage, expat life, expat transition, isolation, limbo, loneliness, Netherlands, new expat, tightrope, walk the ledge on April 28, 2012 | 20 Comments »
It was a chance encounter yesterday on a crowded street that sent me back in time. As I turned the corner onto our nearby shopping street affectionately known as ‘the Fred,’ I caught a snippet of conversation. The young woman was seated at one of the outside tables of a local restaurant, twirling her forefinger along [...]
Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen: Further North
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Travel, tagged Christiansborg Palace, Copenhagen, Danish Royal Treasury, Denmark, Further North, Hans Christian Anderson, Little Mermaid, Netherlands, Rosenburg Castle, Tivoli Gardens & Amusement Park on April 26, 2012 | 12 Comments »
The sun has been playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds all day. It’s teasing me with hints of its brilliance followed by longer periods of grey overcast sky. In other words, it’s a typical spring day. I was visibly reminded that it’s time to revisit earlier posts in the Further North series (here are Stockholm Sun and [...]
Multitasking Overload
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Change, Emotional Resilience, Exercise & Sports, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Food and Drink, Life Balance, Third Culture Kids (TCKs), Writing, tagged children, college visits, competing demands, emotional resilience, exercise, expats, fitness, health, parents, sandwich generation, sleep, TCKs, Telegraph, university search, writing on April 20, 2012 | 16 Comments »
A few days ago I wrote of the challenges many of us face being sandwiched between generations. Just like everyone else, we expats do our best to care for, raise and guide our TCK children to adulthood(and beyond) while also staying connected to and supporting our aging parents. We just sometimes have a few wrenches thrown in due to our lack [...]
Stellar Stonehenge
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Light Bulb Moments, Travel, tagged ancient, astronomy, Bucket List, England, equinox, lunar calendar, lunar eclipse, solar eclipse, solstice, stars, stellar, Stonehenge on April 12, 2012 | 16 Comments »
On a recent trip to England I had the opportunity to experience one of the items on my own personal bucket list: a visit to Stonehenge. And may I just say that it was everything I’d hoped it would be, and more. Competing theories abound as to the origination and purpose of Stonehenge: the massive [...]
Spring Cleaning? Grab Your Bucket
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Change, Expat Life, Life Balance, Writing, tagged bucket, columnist, Expat Focus, monthly column, priorities, spring cleaning, writing on March 28, 2012 | 10 Comments »
Lately there’s been a fair amount of change going on behind the scenes here at Adventures in Expat Land, and it dawned on me that I ought to share some of it with you. Like you, I lead a fairly busy life. One that’s full of family, work projects, friends, activities and interests. Add to [...]
Windmills of Kinderdijk
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Dutch Life, Expat Life, Netherlands, Travel, tagged cafe culture, Kinderdijk, Netherlands, outdoor culture, spring, windmills on March 25, 2012 | 12 Comments »
This weekend has been absolutely phenomenal. You know, the kind of first weekend that truly announces ‘Spring has arrived’. The sun has been shining brilliantly for three days, a gorgeous blue sky with just a few pale wisps of white cloud here and there. The weather has been in the mid 60s to low 70s (Fahrenheit) here in [...]
Food Lines We Won’t Cross
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Albert Heijn, Blogging, Culture & Customs, Dutch Life, Expat Life, Food and Drink, Netherlands, tagged carnivores, cultural mores, horse meat, meat eaters, personal beliefs, squeamish, unusual foods, vegans, vegetarians on March 22, 2012 | 14 Comments »
It’s been at least a few weeks since I’ve written a post that even mentions the phrase Albert Heijn (my favorite local Dutch grocery store to the uninitiated), so I should have known. Something was sure to materialize that I’d end up sharing with you here. Little did I realize exactly how special that something would be… [...]
Please Don’t Tell My Mother
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Life Balance, United States, tagged ACC Tournament, basketball, conversation, dinner, eat together, family, Tar Heels, University of North Carolina on March 10, 2012 | 8 Comments »
I did something last night that was bad. Very, very bad. I knew it was wrong at the time, yet I still went ahead and did it anyway. What is it that has me feeling so uneasy, so guilty, so… naughty? Husband, Daughter and I brought her laptop to the dinner table last night and [...]
Wildlife Filmmaker: How Cool is that?!
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Expat Life, Netherlands, Travel, tagged BBC, expat, filmmaker, Michael Sanderson, National Geographic, Netherlands, The Hague, The Underground, wildlife cameraman, writing on March 5, 2012 | 9 Comments »
Recently I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing a talented young wildlife filmmaker, Michael Sanderson, for an article I was writing for The Underground, our new English language monthly newspaper here in The Hague. Michael’s a creative young visionary in his field whose work has appeared on the BBC and National Geographic, and it was [...]
The Upside of Humor
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Emotional Resilience, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Light Bulb Moments, Travel, tagged adventures, funny, giggles, humor, humorous anecdotes, jokes, knock knock jokes, laughter, Malta, smile on March 1, 2012 | 22 Comments »
You know what I realized yesterday? Humor is funny. Really funny. Let me rephrase that. I’m not talking about dark humor, sick humor, mean-spirited at the expense of someone else humor. I’m referring to your all-purpose humor. The good kind that makes you smile or giggle or even laugh out loud. It feels good. Humor has [...]
Tastes That Tell Our Stories
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Culture & Customs, Expat Life, Food and Drink, Guest Posts, NorthSouthEastWest: Expat Dispatches, Travel, tagged Erica Knecht, expat life, Expatria Baby, five senses, hearing, NorthSouthEastWest: Expat Dispatches, NSEW, sight, smell, taste, touch on February 20, 2012 | 12 Comments »
NorthSouthEastWest: Expat Dispatches It’s time again for our monthly 4-way virtual blog, aka NSEW. Expat bloggers from In Search of a Life Less Ordinary, Expatria Baby, I Was an Expat Wife and here at Adventures in Expat Land get together to write on a theme and then guest post at each others’ sites. Moving abroad [...]
Versatile? I’d Like to Think So
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Blogging, Expat Life, Family & Friends, Writing, tagged blogging, expat blogs, Expatlogue, fellow bloggers, unexpected traveller, Versatile Blogger Award, writing on February 12, 2012 | 26 Comments »
Imagine my surprise when I learned that I’d been the recipient of the ’Versatile Blogger Award,’ bestowed upon me not once but twice (!) this past week from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Many thanks to the talented duo Expatlogue in Canada and Unexpected Traveller in Belgium. No, you don’t receive a vast sum of money or a [...]
Tilting at Bureaucratic Windmills
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Expat Life, Netherlands, tagged bureaucracy, customer service, disbelief, Emergency Room, fraud, frustration, hospital, incorrect charge, medical insurance, treatment on February 8, 2012 | 24 Comments »
If you listen closely, you can hear the steady drumbeat reverberating around the world. That would be the sound of my head slowly and rhythmically hitting my desk. Thump. Thump. Thump. I’m doing it out of frustration, but it does have an upside. While it makes my head hurt, it also takes my mind off the [...]
An International Trade Representative’s Got Nothing on Her
Posted in Adventures Big & Small, Albert Heijn, Dutch Life, Expat Life, Learning Dutch or Other Foreign Languages, tagged Albert Heijn, grocery store giveaways, international trading, negotiations, speaking Dutch, trading cards on January 25, 2012 | 10 Comments »
Late yesterday afternoon, the doorbell rang. As I opened the heavy oak front door, I found myself face-to-face with Catarina, my adorable eight-year-old Dutch neighbor, she of Learning a Language? Child’s Play fame. She was standing there with a tennis racket slung over her shoulder and an air of urgency about her. ‘Hallo Catarina, hoe gaat [...]
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